Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.
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Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
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Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
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Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
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There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
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All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed.
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Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.
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Running a house should be left to innkeepers.
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Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
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It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
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Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
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There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.
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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
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The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society
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In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
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Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
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A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
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Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
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Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
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Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?
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In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
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Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
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To possess a good cognomen is a long way on the road of success in life.